


never to have fallen

by bell (bellaboo), bellaboo, usomitai (bellaboo)



Series: When He was a Girl AU [3]
Category: House M.D.
Genre: Genderswap, M/M, cross dressing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-08-21
Updated: 2008-08-21
Packaged: 2017-10-02 06:16:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bellaboo/pseuds/bell, https://archiveofourown.org/users/bellaboo/pseuds/bellaboo, https://archiveofourown.org/users/bellaboo/pseuds/usomitai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Is it because you don’t want to be a father or because you're too scared?"</p><p>"Sometimes, Wilson--" House suddenly seemed old and weary, "there are good reasons to be scared."</p>
            </blockquote>





	never to have fallen

**Author's Note:**

> My betas were Anna, Riko, and Sarah G. I am indebted to them. ♥ The title comes from Dar Williams' song "After All."
> 
> This is a part of the "When He was a Girl" AU.

She is tiny, invalid, and House loves her so much it scares him.

He takes to calling her Dick, to Wilson’s disapproval.

*

Cuddy tried to give him hell when he announced he’d be the attending during the labor. “You’re the father,” she hissed quietly. “You can’t expect to act rationally at a time like this; there’s no way you could be the attending!”

“It’s Wilson,” House said simply. “I can’t trust it to anyone else.”

When House thinks back to the labor, he remembers the way Wilson, despite how Cuddy held his hand, twisted and cried. House knows that kind of pain. It stays within you, devouring you from the inside.

When the thing finally came out, blood covered and eyes wired shut, House froze, unable to stop staring. It took several yells to bring him back to reality.

She hadn’t wanted to breathe at first, not even with the ET tube down her throat and the oxygen being pumped into her. For horrible whole minutes House had thought she wasn’t ever going to take that first gasp, but then she did. His legs trembled with relief.

*

Wilson emerged from the birth like a piece of porcelain with fracture lines all over and receded into himself. Unable to help him in any other way, House gave Wilson the space he needed and took to visiting Dick.

“I was going to hate you,” House tells her. When it’s just the two of them, he is honest. “You ruined everything.”

Her thin brown hair is plastered to her head and her diaper is bigger than her ribcage. She wiggles a lot and, with a kick, her cover falls to the side. Careful to touch nothing but the purple felt sheet, he places the blanket back over her.

“I didn’t used to believe in paternal instinct, you know,” he says.

*

Once, as a kid, House pummeled a boy.

It'd been a school-yard fight. He and Chris Lahey had been yelling at each other and it’d ended in punches. House was faster and hit him in the face once, twice before Chris Lahey crumpled to the ground. Housed kicked and kicked, powerful from adrenaline.

The thrill was gone the moment someone tried to pull Chris Lahey up. Clothes covered in playground sand, lip bleeding, Chris Lahey could barely stand on his own two feet. He leaned on someone as he hobbled back to the school building, clutching at his stomach.

He had to face Chris Lahey’s black eye every at school, watching it go from swollen purple to sickly greens to, finally, pale pink. But House never forgot, and every time he looked at Chris Lahey, he had to force himself to unclench his hands.

“Don’t let anyone bully you,” was all the wisdom John House had to impart on the incident.

House swore to never get into another fight, but he couldn’t keep the promise.

*

House often watches people through his glass office walls. You can learn a lot about a person when they don’t realize that they’re being examined. Take Wilson, for example. The day after they get back together, Wilson strolls down the hallway with his head bent, the ghost of a smile over his lips. There’s a slight bounce to his step.

House wants to call off whatever it was they were starting up, but every time he picks up the phone, or he walks by Wilson’s office, House stops, remembering the way Wilson looked. It’d been ages since he’d seen Wilson anything approaching happy.

So, when House goes to Wilson’s apartment that evening, instead of breaking things off, they end up kissing in the hallway. Wilson blushes, flustered and eager. Their arms around each other’s shoulders, breathing in each other’s breaths, Wilson pulls away a few centimeters. “Gimme a second, I’ll get ready--“

House hardens at the thought. Would it be that black dress, or something else? But that’d set a dangerous precedence; he didn’t need to go through the transcripts of Wilson’s sessions with his therapist to know what he was thinking and fearing. “Wah, I don’t love Richard enough,” “Wah, I don’t know what I am,” “Wah, House only wants me for kinky sex.”

That last one isn’t true; he’s here for more than that.

He kisses Wilson on the side of his jaw, then whispers: “Some other time.”

Wilson melts.

*

“I want updates, three times a day, more, if you’re not being ridiculously lazy,” House had told Stewart, the to-go-nurse of the NICU, after backing him into a corner. “Message me all the details-- if she coughs, if she turns paler than usual, _everything_. And if anything looks funny, and not in the hah-hah kind of way, you page me.”

Stewart had nodded warily, probably wondering what he’d done so wrong that he’d be cursed with the care of House’s daughter.

But despite her complicated birth, Dick gives relatively little trouble outside the womb. No seizures, no bleeding into the brain, her head fuses fine, and her eyes, blue, like all newborns’, eventually open.

She is fussy with food, and sometimes she decides that breathing is too challenging to bother with, but every time those emergencies arise, by the time House gets there, the situation has already solved. There’s nothing left to do but lean against the wall to make his heart stop galloping. He yells at the nurses to make himself feel better.

 

*

Wilson takes up more space in House’s bed now.

House watches the wide expanse of Wilson’s back, the decisive line of his spine, and the rise and fall of his shoulders as he breathes slow and regular. His body still curves towards the hip, but less so, and he has a sharper scent, somehow, than a month ago.

House traces Wilson’s spine, fingertips grazing skin, and, midway, diverges to the side, to where he knows there is an off-center mole, one not visible in the dark. He wonders if Wilson knows it’s there, this mole that refused to follow symmetry.

How many more times will he get to watch and touch Wilson’s back, like this, before either one of them find yet another reason to break it off? It hurts just to think of it.

Having found the mole, House presses a finger against it; Wilson continues to sleep

*

Wilson doesn’t ask about the cross-dressing kink and House doesn’t tell him.

There’s a lot of other things they don’t talk about, like what they’re going to do when Dick comes out of the NICU.

*

“Boys don’t do that,” his father used to say. Boys don’t cry, boys don’t spend hours studying horticulture, boys don’t hate hunting, boys don’t get scared of spending the night on the lawn.

House started to look for even more things boys didn’t do.

Junior year of high school, his class went on a trip to see some of the bigger cities on the main island, but only in Yokohama did House and Kano manage to sneak out of the hotel. The thin sliver of a moon was hidden by all the dark grey clouds, and though it wasn’t raining, the air was hot and humid and the ground wet.

The city smelled of sea, and House was ready for adventure.

From the hotel they wandered about the streets in Kannai, taking all the wrong turns they could and ended up in a street lined with bars. He’d been arguing with Kano about which to go into when a drunk man emerged from one of them with his arm around the butchest woman House had ever seen. She had the broadest shoulder and no waist, yet she moved with exquisite grace.

House pointed her out to Kano. “What, you’ve never seen an okama before?”

“Okama?” House asked, watching her until she faded out into the darkness.

“Men dressed up as women. Yeah, that’s a _guy_.”

His dad would be so _pissed_ if House ever hooked up with one.

*

“So you see,” he tells Dick, “That’s why Bill and Laura should’ve never gotten together. Their whole relationship just screamed ‘disaster’!” Dick gapes at him, her mouth opening randomly. “Yeah, I know, that’s what _I_ said.”

When she first arrived in the NICU it was almost impossible to lay a hand on her. You had to sneak your hand through glass and covers and wires. Now she’s relatively free. Wilson has taken to petting her, and sometimes that’s all he does while he’s there, rubbing her back or her scalp.

She’s grown. Her wool cap stretches over her head now; when she first came in, it had been so big it threatened to engulf her face. They’ll have to get her a new one.

House wonders just how soft her skin is, but he doesn’t want to ever again lay a hand on her. He wants to condition this into being a strictly no-touching relationship. “But seriously, Dick, the world is a fucked up place. Get used to it.” She puffs up her cheeks. She does that a lot.

*

“It’s for your own good,” his father had always said. But House never did figure out what good the belt did him.

*

Sometimes Wilson dresses up, and sometimes he doesn’t.

House likes it when he doesn’t because then Wilson is more playful. He laughs when they tumble about in bed and kisses House more deeply. He’s more demanding (there, like that, again, again, again, _oh_), and he’s quicker to harden and come. It’s when he’s at his most natural, and House loves him like that.

But House still can’t give up the cross-dressing, and it’s not as if Wilson does much to discourage it. About a week after they start sleeping together again, Wilson shows up at House’s apartment with a nondescript plastic bag, shifting nervously about on his feet. He refused to answer House’s questions and vanished into the bathroom, emerging later in a shimmering white teddy. He wears the lightest hint of make-up.

He looks fucking amazing.

One of Wilson’s arms flirts about his side, covering his front and then his back and then his front again. His other hand is in his hair and his gaze flickers towards and away from House’s. “Victoria's Secret,” he says, crossing his legs. “They didn’t have anything for men, so I got--“

That’s all Wilson gets out before House shoves him against the nearest wall. Wilson sighs and, hugging back, lets House go crazy on him.

*

Just as Wilson spies on House, House spies on Wilson in the NICU.

One day he finds Wilson holding Dick close to his chest, all wires and strings attached. His head is bent over so much that his nose almost touches Dick’s forehead. House can’t hear what he’s saying, but he sees Wilson’s lips move in what looks like a murmur.

At that moment, he knows that Wilson is going to be just fine.

He’s happy for Wilson. Jealous, too.

*

When they’d first met, Crandall’s hair was a natural platinum blond. His curls, which he was too absent-minded to remember to cut, swept over his face, forever covering his eyes. House would stare until Crandall brushed them away. But before long they would be over his face again, and House would go back to staring.

Crandall’s features were fine and soft, straight out of a John William Waterhouse painting.

If House didn’t know for a fact that Crandall was unrepentantly straight, he’d have kissed him silly. As it was, he settled for mocking Crandall mercilessly for his naivety and for being so emotional.

*

House regularly snoops in Wilson’s apartment.

It’s been interesting to watch its evolution over time, like a journal of Wilson’s progress-- or lack thereof. At first it had nothing but empty rooms, but slowly the objects started to creep in: a mattress for the floor, papers from work, a change of clothes or two hanging lonely in the closet, foodstuffs in the kitchen.

By now it’s fully furnished, and House has to go digging to find the good stuff.

Some time after Wilson starts seeing that therapist, House discovers a vial of Zoloft in the bathroom cupboard. He counts the pills and compares the number to what’s listed on the side of the bottle: Wilson’s been taking them for at least a month.

Well, that helps explain Wilson’s upping in mood.

When puts the Zoloft back where he found it and closes the cabinet, he catches a glimpse of himself in the mirror. Not for the first time, House sees his father in the firm line of his jaw; he really is his son. He looks away.

House wanders into the bedroom. He’d been through everything there on previous visits, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t new things to discover. He opens the second drawer on the dresser, and it’s the same as before: at-home sweaters, sweatpants, and towels.

Bored, he pats the clothes and just when he’s about to give up and leave, he hears a clinking sound. Clothes don’t _normally_clink.

He pats more heavily and figures out that the clinking comes from inside the towels. Unwrapped, they reveal a small treasure trove of nail-polish bottles. “Iiinteresting.” Did Wilson still wear them? House couldn’t remember, but then again, these were all skin-colored; they’d be easy to miss.

*

He met Stacy at a paintball game. Hair pulled back, black pants and tight shirt splattered with colors, for a second he’d thought he was facing a guy. Before he could attack, she smirked, pressed the trigger, and hit him smack in the middle of his chest with a ball of red.

It was love at second sight.

*

House comes back the next evening with a vial of the brightest red nail polish he could find. Wilson blushes when he sees it, but says defiantly, “Of course, feel free to go through my stuff. Mi casa is su casa.”

“I was thinking I could paint this on you,” House says, jiggling the vial.

“You are _so_ messed up,” Wilson says. “So how do we do this?”

Wilson ends up sitting on the edge of his bed, one foot perched on the end board and the other crossed beneath it, with House sitting on the floor in front of him. “I mentioned how messed up you are, right?” Wilson asks as House removes the vial’s top.

“_You_ accepted on the spot.”

“True,” Wilson concedes.

House wipes the excess polish off the brush and applies what remains on Wilson’s right toe thumb. Mucous, the polish spreads thickly, the bright red a vivid contrast against the paleness of Wilson’s skin. House dabs more polish on the brush and brings his face closer to paint the edges. “What, you’re an artist now?” Wilson teases.

“Shhh,” House replies. He focuses to keep his hand from trembling as he painstakingly paints the left and then the right side of the nail. His reward is a smooth layer of shimmering polish. Not a trace of red had rubbed onto Wilson’s skin.

Wilson peers over his knee, spreading out his toes. “Hey, not bad. _I_ always got some on my skin--“ And he suddenly shut up, like he’d said a faux-pas.

“Yes, Wilson,” House says patiently, starting to paint Wilson’s right index toe. “You used to have a vagina and a make-up a kit. I know.” Wilson reddens, but relaxes, too, leaning back and letting his head fall a bit. He makes no more flippant remarks as House coats his nails cherry red, one by one.

It gets harder to paint perfectly as the nail sizes decrease, a challenge House is happy to meet. Two strokes and Wilson’s fourth toe nail is done. House does not miss Wilson’s sharp intake of breath. “Almost done with the right foot,” House says, redundantly, preparing the brush for the last toe.

“I love you,” Wilson says.

Stunned, House looks up. Wilson smiles down at him. It’s a shy smile, but full of fondness. “I know we’re not supposed to talk about these kinds of things, but--“

“I love you,” House interrupts, still holding the brush in mid-air.

Neither one speaks for a few heavy moments; they just gaze at one another.

“C’mere,” Wilson finally says.

House swallows deeply. “Gotta finish this first,” and paints as quick as he can. His hands tremble uncontrollably, though he doesn’t know if it’s from excitement or impatience. The skin next to Wilson’s toes on his left foot gets liberally splattered with polish.

Wilson does not complain. He just breathes faster and faster as House approaches his left little toe and when the final stroke is applied, Wilson grabs House and forces him up. They fall to the bed in a mess of kisses and touches. Wilson’s hands are everywhere: on his back, over his shoulders, cupping his face. “I love you like crazy--“

House gently kisses Wilson’s cheek. It’s like they’ve gone mad. Or maybe after so many months of damming up their feelings, it’s all rushing out, now that the floodgates have been opened. House cannot stop himself from repeating those three words, and Wilson answers in kind.

By the time they’re done, most of the nail polish has rubbed off onto the sheets, specks of red over a field of white.

*

Wilson reads the newspaper, and House watches from behind. He’s at the desk facing the window, legs crossed and leaning back into the chair, like he’s been doing so every night for weeks now. Maybe he thinks he’ll keep on doing so, in that very spot, for weeks, months, years to come.

As if they could ever last that long; House clenches his hand.

Wilson turns his head to look at House. “Something wrong?”

“You’re an idiot,” House snaps.

Wilson arches an eyebrow. “Any particular reason why, this time?”

“Always have been and always will.”

“I see,” and Wilson turns back to his reading, flipping the page. House throws himself into the TV couch and turns up the volume twice as loud as necessary, knowing how much it’ll irritate Wilson. Maybe that’ll teach him to be so stupidly trusting.

*

At one in the morning House is in the hospital for the usual reasons: because his patient is trying to die, because he can, because he doesn’t want to face Wilson.

He catches Cuddy in the NICU, sitting next to Dick’s incubator.

House watches, wanting to see if she’ll say or do anything interesting. But she too is watching, leaning towards the incubator, her elbows on her knees. She’s got on an ironic half-smirk, and her eyes don’t really seem focused on what’s in front of her.

House intrudes. “She’s the most exciting show in town.”

Cuddy sits up straight, drawing her hands into her lap. For a second she almost looks guilty, like a student caught rummaging through her teacher’s desk for the answer key, but she quickly calms down. “You’re here early.”

“The early bird gets the worm-- not sure what worm I’m trying to catch, though.” He grabs the chair facing the incubator next to Dick’s, turns it, and sits. “But I’m pretty sure I know which worm _you_ want.”

She shoots him a sharp look. “Here to mock?”

He is, actually. He’s been feeling too soft lately, a sharp wooden corner filed down to a smooth surface. Mockery would bring back his edge. “I’m just saying; if you wanted one that badly, you should’ve asked earlier. I’ve got the best credentials in town; Little Dick there was conceived through a condom.”

“Hah hah,” Cuddy intoned dryly. “I’m an infertile hag, hilarious.”

The mocking didn’t seem so much fun anymore. House shut up.

They sit there without speaking, and the silence starts to overwhelm House. He speaks again. “India, huh.”

She turns to look at him, her hand cupping her chin. “You went through my papers?”

“I’ve got to keep up to date,” he explains. “And don’t pretend you didn’t want me to.” She’d left the adoption request files in a drawer she knew perfectly well he had the key to.

She smiles. “I knew that if you wanted to know, you’d find out one way or another.”

“No lock is too great for my curiosity.” They lapsed into another quiet period, and Cuddy snaked a hand through the holes in the incubator, passing her hand over Dick’s hair. “It takes longer if you look abroad, you know.”

“Oh, wow, I had no idea,” she says. She is smiling, confident in a way he hasn’t seen her be in years. “But it’s more guaranteed. And I don’t mind waiting; it’s already taken this long, after all.”

How strange, House thinks, to have to chase after a baby.

*

House writhes, each stroke from Wilson’s fingers against his prostrate straddling him between pleasure and near-pain. He gasps uncontrollably, close to sobbing, but it’s okay because Wilson is there, whispering reassurances, gentle despite the near-excruciating nature of his touch

Pressed chest to chest, it’s as if they’re getting closer and closer, though that’s not possible, for they are skin to skin, sweaty body slipping against sweaty body. House nestles his face against Wilson’s neck, seeking refuge from the intimacy by breaking eye contact.

He comes not much later, groaning quietly against Wilson’s slick collarbone. Wilson hugs him all the stronger.

Once he’s past the aftershocks, House can look up again. Wilson is smiling at him.

They flop back on to the bed, boneless and sated. Wilson had come earlier, riding House with abandon, and now they engage in serious post-coital lip-locking. House savors feeling Wilson against him without the driving urge to come already.

But Wilson cuts the kissing sooner than House would’ve liked, their bodies still wrapped around each other. “Why won’t you go near Richard?”

So much for not talking about it.

House shuts his eyes; the pain in his leg lights up sooner than it should’ve, cutting right through the after-glow. He has to roll to give his leg better support on the bed; it won’t help much, but it should lessen the damage until his next planned Vicodin. “I sit next to her for hours every day. What more do you want.”

Wilson still has an arm hooked around him. “That’s not what I mean, and you know it.”

God, Wilson could be so annoying. House rolls even more out of Wilson’s hug. “You’re making a big deal out of nothing.”

“I think it’d do you good, House. You _and_ her.”

“Look, I don’t want to hear it from the guy who cross-dresses to get a cheap ego-boost out of his boyfriend’s fetish.” House snaps.

Wilson frowned but dropped the subject.

*

“…and your father is tearing up the rotten floor boards on the porch. You should see him, he’s happier than a lamb,” Blythe chattered over the phone.

“I’m sure.” House’s father did always like do-it-yourself projects, especially if it involved deconstruction.

“How about you, Greg? Any news?”

I have a daughter, House thought. I have a daughter with the one man who might be even more screwed up than I am, and it’s the most terrifying thing I’ve ever known. “You know,” he replied, scratching at the side of his chair, “Nothing much. The old, it is the same.”

*

“Hey,” Wilson says. He managed to call House into his office, on the pretext of needing a consult, and behind closed doors and shades, holds House’s face between his hands. “What’s bothering you? You’ve been on edge.”

House tries to think of what he could say that would get Wilson off his case without broaching the truth, but he can’t come up with anything, and he remains trapped. Wilson brings his face closer and the tips of their noses touch. “Just more general House misery?” Wilson slips a finger beneath House’s t-shirt and runs it along his collar bone. “I’ve got this new outfit, I bet it’ll cheer you right up.”

House leans his forehead against the top of Wilson’s shoulder. He’s being the unreasonable one, Wilson shouldn’t be trying to make him feel better. “You do too much, Wilson,” he says, tired and bitter and sorry.

One arm slipping down to wrap around his waist, Wilson’s other hand strokes the back of House’s neck, his fingers getting caught up in hair. House doesn’t know what else to do, so he lets Wilson comfort him.

*

Four and a half months after her birth, all Dick needs from the NICU is the ventilator.

“That’s the last step, isn’t it?” Wilson says, running a hand over the top of her head. She looks almost like a normal baby by now, but she’s still tiny, like she’s been compressed to pocket-size. Dick makes as if to grab Wilson’s wrist, and he lets her paw at it. If there’d been no one to see, House might’ve smiled. “I could actually take her home like this.”

House snaps his head towards Wilson, staring with disbelief. Wilson amends, “With a ventilator, of course, and maybe a nanny, but those are just details. She’s ready to go home.”

“She’s got a round-the-clock diaper changing service here.” Not to mention machinery, medicine, and nurses. If anything happened to her, she’d have care within seconds. At home, not even Wilson’s or House’s knowledge might be enough. “Why leave?”

“_Besides_ the hundreds of thousands of dollars bill we’re racking up?” Wilson asks.

“That’s what insurance is for,” House argues.

“A home environment will be healthier for her. I’ll go on leave and get her started on life outside the NICU.” Wilson picked her up and held her to his chest, careful to not disconnect the tube to the ventilator.

House’s stomach twists, but he knows that Wilson has made his mind up, suddenly wishing he could take back everything he’d done to help build up his self-confidence. If Wilson were still the sniveling coward afraid of his own flesh and blood, then maybe Dick could’ve spent weeks or months more in the NICU. She could’ve stayed until she was absolutely fine. Which would never happen, but that doesn’t mean House couldn’t wish for it.

It’s decided that she’ll spend one more week at the NICU, just to be sure. Then she’s headed for Wilson’s home.

*

From the moment he hears of Dick’s imminent release, House has a low-grade headache, which only makes the hurt in his thigh throb with an intensity he hasn’t felt since his parents’ last visit. He takes an extra Vicodin, and then another.

He takes an extra two Vicodin the following day, and he starts the day after that with a double dose. He jitters so much that his hands tremble no matter how hard he tries to still them, but he cannot resist another pill at lunch. He’s not so stupid as to take them in front of Wilson, but after House almost overturns a tray with nothing heavier than a bag of chips and a coffee, Wilson shoots him an accusatory look.

On the fourth day, House accidentally knocks over a vase of flowers.

It happens before he knows it. One second he’s waving a hand as he insists at Cameron that their latest patient does not need to be informed of all the risks of her upcoming surgery, the next there’s the crash of breaking glass.

Red flower petals and glass shards cover the ground around their feet. “Look at what you made me do,” House snaps, stepping out of the mess.

“Me? You’re the one that knocked them over!” Cameron retorts.

He yells at her anyway, and at the janitor that comes to clean up. Later he yells at Chase and Foreman as well.

Back at his apartment, House stares at his trembling hands.

He takes another Vicodin.

*

The day Wilson takes Dick home, House hides himself.

The following evening House is at home, feet on the table in front of the couch. He pretends to watch TV, but he stares unseeing at the screen. He doesn’t even know what program is on.

The doorbell rings. House neither gets up nor answers; there’s no one he wants to see right now. The doorbell rings again and after another long pause, a key goes into the lock.

House closes his eyes. He really hates Wilson, sometimes.

He hears the door opening and stoutly refuses to turn around. “The least you could do is close the door for me,” Wilson reprimands. “I’ve sort of got my hands full here.”

Hands full?

House whips around. Wilson walks in, a bundle of cloth in his arms. House can make out bits of plastic tubes and tiny fingertips. “Are you crazy?!” he asks, rising to his feet. “You should’ve left her with the nanny--“

“That would’ve defeated my purpose.” Wilson comes forward.

“The door is still open,” House points out nervously.

“Okay,” Wilson says too easily. “Hold her for me while I close it?”

“No--“ he protests, but Wilson has already extended Dick towards him and House, half-scared she’ll get dropped, puts his arms around her, his hands still trembling. And then it’s too late: Wilson pulls away, leaving House entirely in charge of supporting her.

“She won’t break,” Wilson says gently.

Yesterday she had weighed four pounds and three ounces. House knows because the nurses emailed him the information from their last check-up. But it feels like a lot less in his arms, even with the blanket and the oxygen cylinder.

She looks from side to side, interested in all the movement. “She’s so light,” House whispers. All he has to do is shake her or let her fall to the ground and it’d be over.

“You’re not going to break her,” Wilson insists. “_Look_ at her.”

She yawns and closes her eyes, falling asleep. As if his arms were a safe place for that.

“Oh, god,” House breathes.

Because there’s no crib, yet, in the apartment, Dick sleeps that night between them. She doesn’t spontaneously combust, the world doesn’t stop spinning, and the following morning eventually arrives. “Morning,” Wilson yawns when he wakes up. House grunts in reply.

Dick is between them still, her hazel brown eyes blinking open at the noise. The oxygen cylinder, cool to the touch, has rolled towards House’s abdomen, but Dick herself hasn’t moved. The rolling and the crawling and the head-banging will come later.

“Morning, Rich,” Wilson says, cradling her as he sits up.

“Rich?” House echoes.

“What?” Wilson plays with her tiny hands; she waves them happily, her mouth opening and closing like a fish up against the wall of glass tank. “I’m trying out nicknames; pretty much anything would be better than ‘Dick.’”

‘Rich’ darts her eyes back and forth between House and Wilson, her left leg kicking insistently. She makes a high-pitched squeal, and House doesn’t know if he’s ever seen her this excited. It must be from all the stimulation of the new environment.

She lets out something that might’ve been a giggle and then promptly spat up.

Wilson lets out an exclamation of consternation, and House laughs. “I don’t know, she seems like a Dick to me.”

Wilson sighs and peers at the mess on himself and her. “You’re going to be a wonderful influence, I can tell,” he says morosely. “Take her; I have a change of clothes for her in the car.”

“But she’s barf-covered!” House complains, but it’s mostly for show. He’s already grabbing tissues from a Kleenex box on the bed stand and wiping away the worst of upchuck once he’s holding her in one arm.

Once Wilson is out of the room, he grins down at her. “That’s a good girl. Throw up on him any time you want.”

Dick hasn’t learned how to smile yet, but she seems happy enough, her face pink and mouth opened wide.

*

Author's notes: This fic _brought me to my knees_. In the "WHY IS WRITING SO HARD" way.


End file.
